Jane’s POV
Owen slapped a hand over Ares’s mouth. “Mommy,” he said, overly loudly, glaring at his brother, “what’s going on?”Shame crawled up my spine. What the fuck had I been doing? I hated Hunter, I hadn’t forgiven him – and yet I’d been so desperate for him that I hadn’t even thought to lock the damn door.
My cheeks burned as I slipped off of him. “Boys, can you give me a minute?”
Hunter yanked the duvet off the bed and used it to cover us both. For a split second – a tiny, single, infinitesimal second – I felt like we were their parents. Both of us, acting together as a team. Sure, it was the worst of circumstances – but for that second, it was kind of… nice.
I’d never had a teammate in this. It had always been my boys and I against the world. I’d had to shoulder that responsibility entirely by
Jane’s POVI put my hand over her arm and leant in close, my eyes darting around the grounds to make sure we weren’t being overheard. “What did you hear?”She shook her head; she too was looking around, and the tension swelling around us made the tiny hairs on my forearms stand up. The warm, early autumn air suddenly turned chilled. “Let’s find somewhere we won’t be overheard,” she whispered.I nodded, then pursed my lips as I thought through our options. “We can’t go back to my rooms. The boys are there, and,” my face flamed red, “it’s prone to interruptions.”“We could go back to mine?” she suggested. “S is working, and it’s so secluded by the woods that, now the excitement of us becoming mates has died down, we don’t get many visitors.” She eyed my blush, having only just noticed it. “Are you okay, girl?”That only made it grow darker. I couldn't get thoughts of Hunter out of my head. I could still feel his electric touch, the heat of his body pressing against mine...I forced them
Jane’s POV“She – I – wait – Amy – she – what?” I blinked at Rose. Everything looked fuzzy and warped. My hands and feet went numb and the rest of me froze solid.How could she know?And, more importantly – if she knew, what was she playing at? She’d had so many chances to hurt me, kill me, drug me, and…Oh my god, had she drugged me? That night, in the bar? The same night I’d come back and I’d felt such powerful lust towards Colin?I dropped my head into my hands and groaned. “Oh my god.”“Girl, you’re spiralling,” said Rose, hopping off her stool and hugging me. I leant into her embrace as splinters of ice cracked through my body. I felt like I was being torn apart from within.“What did she say?” I asked eventually, my voice hollow.Rose pulled back and sat
Hunter’s POV‘You really think this is going to work?’ I asked Reg.He nodded firmly. ‘Trust me.’Rolling my eyes at him, I thought to myself that I’d be wiser to trust Pinocchio when his nose was elongated. But I did it anyway. I didn’t have much choice.If this was what I needed to do to win Jane back, then I would do it. I lifted my hand and knocked on the door, calling out the boys’ fake names for good measure.“I’m here for Ramil and Cargan Bree.”If I knew Jane as well as I thought I did, then I knew she’d heard my knock and was, most likely, already up and stood waiting, with her sons already ready to go. She was the most prepared woman I’d ever met; that was why I liked to throw curveballs her way. Seeing how she deflected them was always interesting.Or at least it had been, until she’d put a stop to seeing me altogether. That defensive tactic hadn’t been my favourite.This was my way back in. It had to be.She’d already slipped up yesterday. I couldn’t stop thinking about it
Hunter’s POVI felt like I had something big and sharp and unbearably painful lodged in my throat. Ares had shifted into his wolf form now and was proudly strutting about but the image of that birthmark was burned onto my retinas and it obliterated everything else I could really see.Ares had the birthmark that every Burns boy had. Nobody had ever been able to explain it beyond a weird genetic quirk, but every single one of us, from our bloodline, had that birthmark on their butt.So why did Ares have it?It didn’t make any sense to me.Unless…But no.The timings didn’t make sense. Jane and I… my memories were hazy. Truly hazy, not like when I’d been pretending to have lost my memory in the desert. Had Jane and I had sex back then? I didn’t remember ever having sex with her; I just remembered being drawn to her in a way I couldn’t explain, but nothing more. Reg, of course, loved her, had been mad for her, but that didn’t add up to a kid that could potentially be mine.Or did it?Reg
Jane’s POVHunter marched straight into my bedroom and grabbed my shoulders. He yanked me to him; his nostrils were flared and his eyes were wide.Dread swept through me barely a second before he spoke.“Jane, are they my kids?”My world careened off its axis. I was quick to hide my shock and quick to recover. Instead of frowning – or gasping – I arched an eyebrow at him. “Who are you talking about? Actually, what are you talking about?”His whole body shook. “Don’t – don’t do that. I want the truth, Jane. Tell me the truth.”I lifted my chin. “I don’t know what you mean.”“Yes,” he snarled, gripping me even tighter, “you do. Are they my kids?” he asked again.How on earth had he worked it out? I trusted my boys completely; they wouldn’t have told him. We’d all been so careful to keep the secret. He had no reason to think Ares and Owen were anything to do with him.What had happened during their first training session?Before I could answer, the two of them rushed in. “Alpha Hunter,
Hunter’s POVI couldn’t let them go.They were my boys. Mine.I stared blankly at Jane, her firm, “No,” ringing in my ears and making my head pulse with pain. “No?” I repeated, pressing my thumbs to my temples and digging them in hard. A second ago, my mind had been full of excited plans – and now it was like every part of me had frozen solid. “What do you mean, no?”Jane frowned at me and took a slow step back. “Hunter, you can’t just start taking us out for dinner and acting like a parent. Things haven’t changed that much. We’re not a couple. You still have Amy, and Ava, and Obie. You have your family; I have mine.”“But Ares and Owen are my family,” I argued. “They’re my children.”It all made sense now. Why I’d felt so drawn to them, why I’d found them so cute compared to the other nose-picking little brats. Werewolves had an innate sense for these sorts of things, and I’d clearly been ignoring mine for far too long.‘I’m a daddy wolf?’ said Reg, like he was coming out of a stupo
Jane’s POVI stood in my bedroom, my hands braced on the windowsill, until I’d managed to halfway process everything that had just happened.Then I thought the words, ‘Hunter knows Ares and Owen are his sons,’ and I started to spiral all over again.I sank down until I hit the floor, my back sliding down the wall. I buried my head in my hands and took some deep breaths. I didn’t even have Ina to talk to anymore, not in the same way; without her, my worries consumed me.Distantly, I was aware that I was supposed to be at work. I couldn’t let myself fall apart now. Wasn’t that just the story of my life?After checking on Ares and Owen and getting them off to pack school, I drifted over to the hospital in a daze. My mind stopped forming full sentences at some point and just provided me with a series of images, mostly Hunter’s facial expression shifting, almost infinitesimally, just enough that I could feel his hurt and anger reverberating through me.It made me hate him all the more. Or
Jane’s POVI stared at him. My sons rushed past me and sat down at the dinner table, grinning from ear to ear.“What’s going on?” I asked coldly, narrowing my eyes at the three of them. “I said we couldn’t have dinner tonight, Hunter.”“You did,” he said amicably, sitting down and pouring two glasses of wine for us, and two glasses of water for the kids. “But then I remembered that I’m your Alpha, and that means you have to play host to me if I ever feel like it.” He met my gaze with a cheeky smirk. “And tonight, I feel like it.”My skin burned with hatred. That bastard! He’d already used the Alpha card on me to force me to stay in the Storm pack, and now this. It was beyond belief.Only it wasn’t, was it? Hunter didn’t know how to show his feelings. I didn’t think he even knew how to feel them a lot of the time. He got what he wanted by trickery – or, like tonight, by just taking it.“Come on, then, sit down.” He gestured for me to take the seat beside him. “I’m still in my work clo
Jane’s POV “Hunter?” I frowned at his back as he marched me up the stairs to our bedroom. “What’s going on?” He shot me a reassuring smile over his shoulder, but didn’t slow his pace. “I just need to talk to you.” We’d moved out of the pack house. It held too many memories for us both. Now, we lived in what was basically a small mansion on the edge of the forest, not far from Rose and S’s house. It was light and airy, all warm wood and draping ivy paired with gleaming, modern appliances and crisp, cream-painted walls. The kids had a room each: Owen’s filled with state-of-the-art tech gadgets, Ares’s with workout equipment, and Ava’s with easels and canvases and a drawing tablet. They had everything they needed, and more space than Owen and Ares had ever had, but most nights they dragged their mattresses into each other’s rooms and slept huddled together. We were safe now, but we’d all been through so much. Too much. I hoped my kids were young enough that they’d recover from the t
Hunter’s POVKim ran towards me, his jaw wide, his canines glinting in the weak sunlight. Owen and Ava clung haphazardly to his back. Fear flashed through me. I started towards them–But they were safe, and Jane was safe, and I was safe, and we were home. I sucked in a long, slow breath, and a forced a smile as they neared me. The smile took hold, tucking itself into the corners of my mouth, and by the time my children had reached me I was grinning at them. I opened my arms wide, and the three of them ran straight at me. We tumbled to the ground, rolling in the grass, laughing; Kim licked my face, and Ava and Owen scrambled into my arms.“Hey, kids.” I pulled back and ruffled their hair. Kim rolled onto his back, his paws sticking up in the air. Ava rubbed his belly.‘Wow,’ I said to Reg dryly, ‘he really is your son.’‘I saw Ares eat a salad the other day – and enjoy it.’ Reg shuddered. ‘I love him, but that really threw me.’I pinched the bridge of my nose. ‘Don’t remind me. Then
Jane’s POVTime passed strangely after that.There were noises out in the hall. Noises I probably should’ve listened to, made something of, but…What was the point? Hunter was gone. My heart, my soul – my life – was dead.My throat closed up around the words I’d spoken. I’d bared every important moment of my life to the Moon Goddess, bound my prayer in my story, and she hadn’t listened.She hadn’t listened.I knew Ava was still with me, still clinging half to me and half to her daddy, and that was the last straw for me. Her pain became glass shards, which scraped at the raw edges of my own wound.For a while, my hurt was so immense that I felt nothing at all. If Nina or Ava spoke to me, I didn’t hear them. I was numb, frozen to the spot, Hunter’s lifeblood going cold and sticky on my palms.Beneath the frost of my numbness, though, a fire roared. I was terrified to start feeling again, to start moving. The second I moved my aching legs and stood up, time would start again.And the sec
Jane’s POVI shifted out. “No!” I wailed. I fell to my knees, then crawled over to him. My fists pounded the cold, metallic floor with every weak, shuffling movement I made.“You can’t be gone,” I whimpered, tears streaming down my cheeks, a lump forcing my throat to close around the words. “You can’t be.”But I knew that he was. The mate bond writhed and shrieked within me, screeching out for the severed other half of its soul.“Hunter?” I choked, grabbing him gently. His head lolled back as I moved him. His eyes were open; their blue irises were cold, so cold, and his pupils were unseeing. Cuts nicked his face.I pried him away from his father. Hunter’s body was merged with Reg’s: his hands were furry and clawed, but the rest of him was human. I wished he had human hands I could hold.It was that thought that shattered me entirely. I would never be able to hold his hand again. It was silly, and childish, and pathetic, but it was that notion that broke me. Not that I had lost my ma
Jane’s POV I was torn between my sons. Owen was safe – for now – so I turned my attention to Ares. His wolf, Kim, hit the ground. I bit back a cry– Kim rolled over, tussling with his attacker. He snarled, revealing huge canine teeth, then dove his muzzle at the other wolf’s neck, again and again and again. Blood spurted, slicking his fur coat. Then they were rolling again, slamming sideways into the thinning crowd of battling werewolves. The wolf on top of Kim was grey, and as big as him, but its size looked abnormal – the result of performance enhancing drugs, not nature, as Kim’s stature was. They fell back, circling each other. Kim’s upper lip pulled back from his teeth, revealing shining white canines with blood dripping from them. My stomach turned over. Beneath that fur coat was my sweet son, who wasn’t quite seven years old yet. He and his brother had seen so much – too much – already. Kim pounced. The grey wolf was a half-second behind, but lunged forward with a snarl the
Jane’s POVAlpha Dylan – or what was left of him – pounced at Hunter. A scream built in my throat, but I was helpless to do anything. He’d given me a chance to get our kids out safely, and I wasn’t going to waste it.I wasn’t even sure how I was alive right now. One moment, I’d been lost to the foggy darkness of unconsciousness, and glad of it, too, after all the pain I’d been forced to endure. Even in the depths of nothingness, I’d known that agony beckoned in the light.But there were other things there besides the pain. Love, in all its many forms, waited for me here. My children. My mate. My friends.So I clung to wakefulness with everything I had and prayed that whatever was keeping me awake would keep working for another second, another minute, another hour. I needed every moment I could steal to get my kids to safety.Amy kicked the door open. My view of Hunter disappeared as Carl pushed me through it. The last I saw of him was his own father grinning at him, sick, twisted, sad
Hunter’s POVEverything moved in a blur. My eyes were fixed on my father, his mutated wolf filling my field of vision as he moved swiftly towards me. But, from the corner of my eye, a sudden burst of movement snagged my gaze.Jane sat bolt upright. She looked like a zombie, her wounds unhealed, her eyes blank – but she was moving, scrambling to grab the kids, crying out my name as my attention was forced back onto my dad.His jagged claws caught the edge of my shoulder. I shifted out before he could claim the upper hand, letting Reg’s powerful body burst out of mine.My father sneered down at me. The knobbed ridge of his spine seemed to snap as he bent low, his sickly orange eyes meeting mine. I could smell his stale breath. “You always were weak,” he said, his voice a hollow growl. It didn’t sound like it had; it was all wolf, vicious and as broken as he was.Suddenly, I wasn’t a grown man, a strong Alpha, a mate, standing before a weak and unwell old man who had clearly gone to desp
Hunter’s POVIt was too late. My hand was on the doorknob and it was already swinging open.There was no turning back now. Reg wailed. ‘I can smell her blood! Jane’s hurt! Jane’s dying! Jane’s dead!’The buzzing in my ears drowned out his mournful howls. Everything was moving in slow motion as I finished easing open the door. I took it all in whilst observing nothing other than the most heart-breaking thing I’d seen since… since...The present was so horrifying it eclipsed even my darkest memories.Jane was lashed securely to a metal table. My heart broke and, somewhere through the haze of my heartache, all I could think was: she must be so cold.Her limbs stuck out at odd angles. Blood covered her. But worst of all was her face. It was empty. It was like someone had made a perfect physical copy of her but had left out the most important part: her soul. The waxy figurine atop the metal table looked like Jane, broken and bruised but still my Jane, only without the bright spark of de
Hunter’s POVI expected for my world to spin off its axis at those words – but it didn’t. In fact, I felt very little. Nothing at all.I’d never clicked with Obie. I’d always been drawn to Ava but never to him. In my mind, she’d been my daughter and Obie had been Amy’s son. Huh. Now I knew why.That was why I fixed Carl with a cold stare and said flatly, “I know.”Compared to the other revelations I’d been through lately – hell, even in just the last few hours – this barely made me bat an eye. Maybe it was because I cared about Jane and Ava and her sons, but maybe it was because, deep down, I really didn’t care about Amy or Obie. ‘Hunter!’ gasped Reg. ‘How can you think that about a poor, innocent baby?’‘That’s the thing. I don’t think anything about him. Anyway, he’s nothing to do with me. Not really. That takes the matter out of my hands, don’t you think?’Reg muttered under his breath that I was horrible and unfeeling, and that was probably also true, but I still couldn’t make my